The number you have dialled is currently unavailable
by Missekatten
Summary: Crowley has just escaped from his apartment and is trying to get to Aziraphale, who is not picking up. Small one-shot, inbetween/in-the-scene thing I just had to get out of my system before going back to work. Please enjoy, and feel free to leave a review! Spoilers for ep.5, I suppose!


_"The number you have dialled is currently unavailable. Please hang up and try your call again."_

The calm of the computerised voice made Crowley strongly suspect that his side had probably had a hand in its development, although he couldn't quite remember just now. But what could possibly be more infuriating, when the world was about to up into goo, than someone asking you in the most calm, soothing and polite voice to please try again? Try again?! When you had exactly one chance in Hell to do anything about it? He had to get hold of Aziraphale, but the angel wasn't answering his damned phone! Sure, the angel had turned him down twice already, and the burn of those denials gave even infernal fire a good run for its money (not that Crowley intended to ever let Aziraphale in on _that_ particular piece of truth), but come on!

Anyway, three was supposed to be some sort of number, right? He tried again.

"Call Aziraphale."

_"The number you have dialled is currently unavailable. Please hang up and try your call again."_

What could he be doing? He had been in the bookshop not five minutes ago! And while Aziraphale disliked telephones so much that he really only kept one for appearances' sake, and greeted every call with a "we're closed" (it would never have occurred to him to simply _not_ answer – he was just too _good_), Crowley knew that he would _always_ pick up the receiver.

But he did not answer now. Now, when Crowley really, really needed to talk to him.

The exhilaration of having successfully escaped Hastur's and Ligur's slimy grasp was dissipating like ice-cream on a griddle. Armageddon was mere hours away, this was their last chance to get off planet, and Aziraphale was not picking up his damned phone. It made him worry, and since demons were not supposed to feel worry (it meant they felt compassion, and _whoa_ was that a sin not even Hell could condone!) he was decidedly turning his worry into a much more productive rage. The Bentley took another sharp turn, and narrowly avoided a baby stroller. Distantly, he thought, that it was probably something that might have gotten him into Hell's bad books, if anyone was still keeping count. On the other hand, if he had hit, he would have been in Aziraphale's bad books, and that felt worse.

But, and this was truly troubli- _hrm, infuriating_ \- Crowley could not make Aziraphale out anymore.

The unbidden realisation made his blood run suddenly, literally cold, and as he lost the grasp of his body, he almost crashed the Bentley into a mailbox before he had the presence of mind to miracle the car safely away. Still, his heart beat in an unfamiliar and wholly uncomfortable way, like thunder, and rain as cold as ice. Aziraphale wasn't _there_ anymore.

It was not like a GPS.

There was no pin marked "Aziraphale" on a detailed map of London, that had suddenly gone missing. But there was a presence to all angels, just as there was to all demons, and Crowley had gotten very familiar with this particular angel and his presence – you know, the way things went when you were the only two operatives actually planet-side at all, for an odd six thousand years, often working the same groups of people. And Aziraphale's presence was always just _there_, like a constant little fleck of angelic influence poking at him, and _there_ was also, most of the time, a bookshop in SoHo.

But there was nothing _there_ now.

Crowley urged the Bentley to a new speed record and growled.

* * *

It was not actually an inferno; Crowley knew what infernos looked like, and they were a lot more destructive than this. It did not have to be, though. Paper burned easily, and here was a lot of fire, cascading out of the shattered windows of a very familiar bookshop.

Crowley pulled up at the curb, ignoring the double yellow lines as usual since they just rolled up and away anyway (they knew the Bentley well by now) and slid out of the car, heading for the building.

"Are you the owner of this establishment?" someone shouted behind him, sounding both angry and hopeful and as if this question was not at all deeply insulting. It made Crowley break his eye contact with the fire long enough so that he could glare over his shoulder and hiss back with as much contempt as he could muster:

"Do I look like I run a bookshop?"

He did not stop to hear the answer, but instead headed for the miraculously (could it be? please let it be!) intact front doors. They sprang open for him, and as soon as he felt the heat from the flames on his face, slammed shut behind him again.

Fire was blazing everywhere, feeding hungrily upon millions of pages of spry paper, upholstered furniture, pillows and drapes.

"AZIRAPHALE!" Crowley shouted, looking around the circular front room, trying to see if there was perhaps, against all odds, an angel somewhere on the floor. Maybe he had taken a nap. Maybe someone from Hell had decided to start taking out the other side early, and had been unusually ingenious about it. It would be just like Aziraphale to invite them in, maybe offer them tea-

"AZIRAPHALE?" he bellowed again, trying to stay angry, although the obvious lack of an angelic bookshop owner was making it very difficult. "Where the Heaven are you, you idiot?"

Ash was falling down on him from the fires on the upper floor, and there was the roar of flames and the crash of glass shattering as another one of Aziraphale's precious 18th-century wall sconces succumbed to the heat. No angel. No angel anywhere. There was no one there, and no one _there_ either.

"I CAN'T FIND YOU!"

He had always been able to find Aziraphale before. Even when they had been on different continents, he had been able to feel the angel's being there, and there had even been times when he had been able to tell that the angel was in trouble - more often than not because he was too trusting, or too naïve, or simply too stupid to get himself out of whatever mess he had stumbled upon. But Crowley could not sense Aziraphale now. Not at all.

Not anywhere.

"Aziraphale!" he cried out again, as if perhaps _this_ time, the angel might step out from some other room and look all surprised at the raging fire that he had totally not heard over his exciting new book, "for God's-"

He choked.

"For Satan's-"

No. _No, no, no._

"Aaaahhhh! FOR SOMEBODY'S SAKE, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

A jet of water broke through one of the last remaining panes of window-glass and hit him square in the face. His sunglasses cracked, one of the shards hitting his face as he flew backwards and landed flat on his back on the littered floor, drenched. He gasped, trying to gather his scattered wits about him, and then groaned as he heaved himself up.

All around him, the bookshop was going up in flames. Hundreds upon hundreds of books, which Crowley knew Aziraphale loved more than anything else in this world, were turning into nothing but fine ash. And he knew, also, that there was no way Aziraphale would have let this happen. No matter the amount of paperwork he might have had to file, or how strongly worded notes he might have received from Micromanager Extraordinaire Gabriel, he would have saved them. He would have been _here_.

But he was not.

"You've gone."

The absence was like a darkness, sucking out the world from underneath him, rising like a tidal wave within.

"Somebody killed my best friend!" he shouted into the flames, which of course paid no attention at all. "Bastards! All of you!"

There was no one here now though, of course. No Aziraphale. No obvious culprit. But someone had done it, and that someone would _pay_. Crowley would just- he'd just...

His gaze fell on a book that lay remarkably unburnt-to-a-crisp on the floor next to him. Aside from only a few scorch marks, the book looked almost untouched by the flames, and the golden letters embossed on the green leather binding were easily legible in the dancing flames. Crowley could vaguely remember Aziraphale lecturing him on it. Usually, Crowley could not help but doze off whenever a lecture was coming on, but these were prophecies, and Crowley had always made sure to take note of all the things the angel loved.

_For future temptation and corruption_, he had told himself. Once. Before.

Now, he grabbed the book, the sole survivor out of all of Aziraphale's prized possessions. There was no fury left in him, no driving rage. Just… this. Roaring fire outside, hollow emptiness inside. A single book.

No point in heading for a distant star system now. There was no one to go there with. Obviously, he did not want the End of the World to be the end of him as well, but he did not want to fight, either. He had never been a fighter. Or a runner, to be honest. He was someone who just… hung out. Made the best of what he had. Had a good time. With Aziraphale.

They had had a lot of good times.

He looked at the book again, then pocketed it. The bookshop was barely recognisable anymore and it was getting a bit too hot even for Crowley's body. He should get out of here. Go somewhere, anywhere. Make the best of what he had. What did he have? A couple of hours, tops? Well then. There was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable, but he could have a good time waiting for it.

Aziraphale would've scolded him, of course, but Aziraphale wasn't _here_ anymore, so now, _honestly… _

He got up on his feet and left the blazing fire that had once been a bookshop. He was ready. This was it. The End.

…_what did it even matter? _

* * *

**A/N:** Thank you so much for reading! It's been a long while since I wrote any fanfiction at all, and even longer since I published anything, so I do feel a bit rusty. I hope you've enjoyed this little fic and that you'll want to leave a review - it'd make me very happy if you did!


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